................................................................................ ON THE RECORD WILLIAM HAGUE INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 3.3.96
................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Well, Mr Hague, your Party has six seats out of thirty-eight, forty-one councillors out of more than two-thousand one-hundred, and you are a Yorkshireman. Does that sound to you like a legitimate basis for governing a country? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well, Wales is part of the United Kingdom, and Wales is governed as part of the United Kingdom, and it gains hugely from being governed as part of the United Kingdom. I've never heard Labour politicians after General Elections in the past when they haven't won a majority of seats in England but have won a majority in the country as a whole, saying, "Well of course we mustn't govern England because the Conservatives won that, it's the United Kingdom" HUMPHRYS: It looks bad in Wales doesn't it, that's the point. You're secretary - you Secretary's of State act like pro-consuls sent by the emperor in London to look the affairs of Wales, and decisions are taken, seemingly at whim. You can do what you want to do. HAGUE: What matters is whether it works - and it does work... HUMPHRYS: Is that all? HAGUE: ....and we have seen other things matter, but that is the thing that matters above all else, and we've seen over the last ten years new businesses moving into Wales, Wales gaining more jobs proportionately than almost any other parts of the United Kingdom, and that is now creating a greatly improved situation where we have unemployment down to the same level as the rest of the United Kingdom for the first time since the twenties. Well that really counts and is worth doing. HUMPHRYS: Maybe it is - no doubt it is, but to say what matters is whether it works is hardly a democratic argument. Dictators work., dictatorships work absolutely splendidly in some cases, but we don't want a dictatorship here. HAGUE: I don't think we've seen many cases of dictatorships working very well, but what we have here is (interruption) the United Kingdom working very well, and I am accountable to the House of Commons, including to the Welsh members of the House of Commons. The proposals for an assembly would take away from the House of Commons the right to question ministers about how money is spent, by removing from Welsh and English MPs the right to question how money is spent in Wales. HUMPHRYS: As things stand you make those decisions. You act lonely (sic), it is down to you to decide what you want to do. If you want to do something, if you want to spend money or this or that or the other, you say "We'll spend it then, that's that". HAGUE: I am then accountable to the House of Commons including to the Welsh members of the House of Commons, and of course the true picture is a little more complicated than the one you suggest. You saw me in the film announcing on Thursday changes to the powers of local government in Wales which will give them a much great say over how four hundred million pounds of public money is spent, so it is not a dictatorship. It is not a single man ruling the roost. The various parts of government have to work together and they do in Wales. HUMPHRYS: What I'm saying is that to the Welsh it looks abitrary. I mean let us take that example that we saw in that film there, the Countryside Council for Wales. Now one of the Secretaries of State, David Hunt, rather liked it and they got plenty of money. The next one, John Redwood, didn't like it. He took lots of money away. You liked it so you gave it back to them. Well if that isn't arbitrary I don't know what is. The pro-consul says, "You may now have it - here you are chaps, it's alright, I've decided", but where's the democratic accountability in that? HAGUE: It's a long way from a representative example. HUMPHRYS: Well, it's not a bad example. HAGUE: You could equally have looked at fifty areas where policy has had remarkable continuity. HUMPHRYS: But you can't dispute that specific example, that is precisely what happens. HAGUE: What John Redwood was saying on the film was that he was taking the overheads out of the Countryside Council for Wales. HUMPHRYS: That's even worse. He's telling them how to run their business. HAGUE: What I have been able to do is give money back in order to pursue wildlife and other environmental projects. HUMPHRYS: Because you think it's important. HAGUE: .. without increasing the overheads again, so actually those approaches have not worked together in the conflicting way that is suggested. HUMPHRYS: But you did it because you think it's important. You may or may not be right - we're not here to judge you on that, we don't have the evidence to judge you on that, but you did it because you thought it was important. John Redwood did what he did because he thought it was important. The pro-consul takes the decision and hands down the decree and it shall be done! That's what happens. HAGUE: If only things were that simple. The Secretary of State has to take .. HUMPHRYS: Well it looks pretty simple, those three changes in policy in three years. HAGUE: The Secretary of State has to account to Parliament for the decisions that he takes... HUMPHRYS: After you've done it, after you've done it. HAGUE: ...and he has to answer to Parliament, and Parliament can either give him a ticking off or question him in an extremely hostile way, or tell him to do something different. HUMPHRYS: But if the Welsh MPs.... HAGUE: ..and so democracy is at work. HUMPHRYS: But if the Welsh MPs don't like it, they're in a tiny, tiny, tiny minority at Westminster, so you're answerable to the entire Westminster Parliament for running the affairs of Wales the way you think fit. HAGUE: Wales is proportionately over-represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom... HUMPHRYS: It's not the point... HAGUE: ....because it is, and this is the point, because Wales is a small part of the United Kingdom as a whole, it has more MPs than it would have on a proportionate basis. It has a Secretary of State who sits in the Cabinet, it has a lot of clout at the centre of government. Now is that going to survive setting up an assembly where English MPs would no longer be able to vote on the Welsh matters, Welsh MPs would still be able to vote on English matters. People are then going to say after a few years, why do we have a Secretary of State, why is Wales over-represented in the United Kingdom. And Wales would lose the influence that it now has at the centre of the United Kingdom. HUMPHRYS We had a great discussion about that with the Shadow Secretary a few weeks ago on this programme. What we're talking about at the moment is the way it works under this present system, and you acknowledge, you have acknowledged by your actions that there is a perceived problem of legitimacy else why would you try to make the Welsh Grand Committee look as though it has rather more power than in fact it has, which is none. HAGUE: No, I'm not trying to make it look as if it has more, I'm trying to improve the way in which it holds ministers to account. People want to see the Government held to account, I'm increasing the number of occasions on which I have to answer questions to Welsh MPs, increasing their ability to raise matters in the House of Commons by introducing new types of debates into the Grand Committee. I'm not pretending to give it more power, I'm neither pretending nor intending to give to the Grand Committee or to local government the scale of power which the Labour Party propose to give to a Welsh assembly, because I think that would be fundamentally damaging to the United Kingdom and damaging to the interests of Wales. HUMPHRYS: Well, as you say you're not giving it more powers, it's nothing more nor less than a talking shop, but you're moving it around Wales, and you're making it look as if it does rather more than it does, and it becomes instead of just a talking shop, it becomes a king of
walking talking shop doesn't it, an ambulatory talking shop. HAGUE: It's not a talking shop, and as Parliament most of the time is a talking shop itself, it has the right to question ministers, and that is a great discipline upon the executive branch of government. HUMPHRYS: No, it isn't, because if it questions you and doesn't like your answers, nothing it can do about it, that's it. You say, "Well, there you go - if you don't like it ..." HAGUE: I'm totally accountable to the majority view of the House of Commons, and it all comes .... HUMPHRYS: And the majority in the House of Commons is not of course Welsh, it's English so there you go. HAGUE: Our whole discussion comes down to whether the United Kingdom should be governed with the United Kingdom, and all the questions that you are raising are facets of that debate, and there is of course an irreconcilable difference between people like me who think Wales should be governed as part of the United Kingdom, and people who think Wales should be independent or that it should have its own Parliament or assembly, which, as I say, I believe would be fundamentally damaging to it. HUMPHRYS: But Walter Sweeney, one of your own MPs thinks that what you've done already is the thin end of the devolutionary wedge. HAGUE: I don't think it is the thin end of the wedge because as I've explained I'm doing something quite different from setting up a Welsh Assembly. Well I think I would be able to convince the majority of people in Wales...people in Wales are very ambivalent and sceptical about the merits of setting up an assembly. Last time there was a referendum on this question they voted four to one against the last Labour Government's plan to have a Welsh Assembly. They knew where their interests lay and they voted for the current constitutional arrangements. HUMPHRYS: And the last opinion poll that was taken showed that they were overwhelmingly in support of some kind of assembly, it is possible for a nation to change its mind because it has seen the way things have gone over the last sixteen years and now it appears, we shan't know of course until if there is a referendum or until the next election but at the moment it appears that that is what they want. HAGUE: It is possible for people to change their mind but the opinion poll that I saw last Friday didn't show overwhelming support for an assembly by any means, it showed fifty per cent of people in Wales thought they were in favour of an assembly or something like it. I suspect if there were to be another referendum it would again be rejected and I notice that the Labour Party aren't proposing to have a referendum, they don't have the confidence in the people in Wales to say let us ask you whether you want an assembly, even though they are proposing to have referendums in English regions that want to have assemblies, so I...(interruption)..if we are going to reverse the last referendum we should have another one but they haven't got the confidence or the guts to say that. HUMPHRYS: Your problem is that you're conceding the principle in some respects, certainly as far as the Grand Committee is concerned but you are not satisfying the demand so you are going to fall between two stools here aren't you. HAGUE: No, I'm not conceding any principle. I think I have explained quite carefully that I believe Wales should be governed as part of the United Kingdom, I want to see the Welsh Grand Committee work better as a committee than the House of Commons, I want to see local government take on things which are appropriate to it, which it can do well. But I am not pretending for one moment that I am giving to those institutions the rights and powers of a separate parliament or assembly, I believe the United Kingdom should be governed as a whole. HUMPHRYS: But giving those extra powers to the local authorities in Wales, is in itself a concession that they didn't have enough before, isn't it, else why do it? HAGUE: It's not a concession, it is something that they have asked for which.... HUMPHRYS: Well they've been asking for it for a very long time, you ....in the last sixteen years... HAGUE: And I think they can run those programmes at local level prefectly well, there is no need for me to make the decisions about quite small regeneration projects which local authorities can decide. HUMPHRYS: You have to make the decisions on the big ones not the little ones, so they can look after their own affairs... HAGUE: Well I have to make decisions about ones of course that go right across the boundaries of local authorities or which they couldn't finance on their own, that's when we come back to the Government of the United Kingdom as a whole. But I am not saying to them that I am setting up local government as an alternative to an assembly, I'm saying to local government can do a lot more, but we need to make sure that the existing structures of government work more successfully but we don't need to set up a whole new tier of government which would be a room full of hot air, that would cost people a lot of money for no practical gain. HUMPHRYS: You've made it clear, many many times in the course of this interview that you don't like the idea, the Tory Party doesn't like the idea of a Welsh Assembly and what you've done with the local authorities is in truth a pretty cynical manoeuvre to turn them away from wanting a Welsh Assembly isn't it, that's what that's all about. HAGUE: That's what they asked for and I have given it to them and it has been welcomed on all sides of the House of Commons. So it doesn't look to me much like a cynical manoeuvre because everybody thinks it is a good idea and I think we will see it will work practically and well. The Labour Party will have to explain if local government is able to take on successfully more powers over time, why they still need to have an additional tier of politicians, another whole set of politicians costing the taxpayer a great deal of money. HUMPHRYS: Precisely and that's what it's about isn't it, it's about embarrassing the Labour Party, that's what's behind it. HAGUE: It's Labour councils who asked for it... HUMPHRYS: They've been asking for it for a very long time but you've not given it to them and now the Labour Party...they've been asking for it for years and now that this..the prospect of a Labour Government comes close and with it a Welsh Assembly, you say well on mature reflection, after sixteen years, maybe we'll give it to you. If that isn't naked politics, one wonders what is. HAGUE: I think the cynicism is coming from the other side of the table..(interruption)...these are things which all parties.. HUMPHRYS: How are people going to look at it when they see... HAGUE: It would be regarded extremely positively, why shouldn't I listen to local councils and say: you want to do this, I believe you can do this, I will give you the power to do it. All political parties agreed on that, it is a quite separate demand from tearing up the constitution of the United Kingdom. It's a quite different matter and I am determined to get across to people the dangers of setting up a parliament in Scotland, assembly in Wales, regional committees in England, a dog's breakfast of a constitutional arrangement instead of the arrangements that work now in which Scotland and Wales are very successful parts of the United Kingdom. HUMPHRYS: That very rare breed, indeed almost extinct breed, certainly on the endangered species list, a Conservative Councillor in Wales said you shouldn't do it, so you don't listen to him, but you do listen now, eventually, after all these years, to the Welsh authority, to the Labour authorities, that's a bit odd isn't it? HAGUE: It's not happening after all these years, John Redwood, my predecessor, also transferred new functions to local government, from Welsh Development Agency and other agencies, so there has been a continuity in policy, it will succeed. But it is a quite different argument from breaking up the United Kingdom, or breaking up the constitution of the United Kingdom. HUMPHRYS: Well let me suggest to you that it is a pretty cynical political manoeuvre this but it doesn't actually matter to you because of course you'll be gone, Secretaries of State for Wales don't stay very long do they, it's a stepping stone to greater things. HAGUE: Don't count on it, I would like to be Secretary of State for Wales for a very long time, whether I say by heck or not, according to the cartoonist, although I've managed to avoid doing that so far but I would like to be there for a very long time.... HUMPHRYS: That's what happens isn't it with this particular seat in the Cabinet, it's the most junior seat in the Cabinet and it's a kind of musical chairs, it's useful to the Prime Minister to start somebody off, or maybe to punish them with if they've not been terribly good at they times they were doing - stick them in Wales and we can forget about them and if they do well, perhaps we'll get them to do a proper job at the end of it. That's what it's about isn't it....doesn't have a very good patch. HAGUE: I don't think that is how it is going to be in the future, if it's ever been like that in the past. A lot of my predecessors have done a terrific job for Wales. If you look back to Peter Walker, David Hunt, John Redwood and now me, you see the growth of the Welsh economy, you see a transformation from how Wales was fifteen or sixteen years ago, new industries moving in, that's going to continue. HUMPHRYS: William Hague, thank you very much. HAGUE: Thank you. HUMPHRYS: And that is it for this week. See you next Sunday, good afternoon. ...oooOOOooo...